participant observer

Mike Cole (mcole who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu)
Wed, 20 Sep 1995 05:48:18 -0700 (PDT)

Hi Hiroaki & Angel,

Here at LCHC we are also interested in the role of researchers
in relation to practices they analyse. When we are researchers in our
afterschool settings we are also deliberately participants who seek to
promote development and add to the fun (our own included!) as we play/work
with children and our students who are there for analogous, but different
reasons (they are taking a class).
I believe that our students, who are still in school and usually
young enough to be older siblings of the children, have a very special
role to play because they are directly constituting the activity that
they then describe in their fieldnotes. I have been seeking to explore
this special advantage in relation to the AI adage that to understand
something is to build it and ideas about empathy as the basis for
understanding that go back to Vico.
Perhaps we could exchange ideas by posting papers on the xmac
(oops, xmca) list server and then putting together a special issue
about this topic. I know that Eugene Matusov's work with Babara Rogoff
and colleagues follows a version of this path as well.
And perhaps you two could be special issue editors?
mike
ps- Hiroaki-- Could you describe Yutaka-sensei's ideas about practice
in relation to LPP? How does this relate to his earlier ideas about
anthropomorphic epistemology?